New House, New Stress

16th April 2014
We completed on our house purchase in Cambridge. Said a said mental goodbye to our old, beautifully done up house in Suez Road, and embarked on a new phase of life in taking on a rather decrepit looking property in the north of Cambridge. The new house is smaller than the old one, and from the surveyor's report, we knew it needed work.

Matt went across to Cambridge on Tuesday afternoon, to take the last few items out of the old house, and to be ready upon completion to go over to the new house, ready for the locksmith to meet him and change all the locks.
Issue number one - only one key given by estate agent, and three doors. So the locksmith proceeds to drill out the locks with the words, "this is going to take me hours!"
Thankfully, he over-estimated and did a good job in a short space of time.

Matt, meanwhile, is ringing up the services to register the change of ownership and sort out how on earth one goes about getting prepayment cards etc, as both gas and electricity are on prepayment meters.  Getting prepayment cards is fairly straight-forward but very time consuming:

1. Ring up supplier, get code for card
2. Go to nearest pay point - find they don't have any spare cards!
3. Find a second pay point, give over code, receive cards.
4. Bring cards back to property, put each card in meter to register them.
5. Find cards not programmed correctly, return to pay point number two.
6. Wait for assistant to read manual and reprogram cards.
7. Bring cards back to property, put each card in correct meter to register them.
8. Take cards back to pay point, to put credit on them
9. Bring cards back to property, put them in meter again to transfer credit.
10. NOW you can finally have a cup of tea (except there was no kettle for poor Matt!)

Issue number two - there is no way British Gas will be believe the we're new owners unless we can prove it, because there is too big a debt on the meters. Cue frantic call from Matt for me to photocopy ID to send across.

Issue number three - the house has a fire with back boiler to provide heating and hot water. On first glance, the only way to turn on the fire is with an Allen key... Due to this issue, Matt decided not to turn the gas on to the property, but wait for me to look at it the next day..

Meanwhile, numerous very kind and generous friends have been arriving with all sorts of useful and helpful things for the property, to enable us to spend a week camping in it.

Matt retires to takeaway, exhausted, and having booked the next day off to deal with what that might bring.